News from Vietnam

EU and Vietnam conclude VPA negotiations

EU and Vietnam conclude VPA negotiations

On 11 May 2017, the EU and Vietnam formally concluded their negotiations towards a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA), by initialling the document.

Initialling indicates that both parties confirm that the text is what they agreed. It sets the stage for the parties to later sign and ratify the agreement, after which the VPA will become legally binding.

The VPA aims to improve forest governance, address illegal logging and promote trade in legal timber products. Under the VPA, Vietnam will develop and implement a timber legality assurance system (TLAS) and other commitments.

The agreement also provides for the establishment of complaints mechanisms and independent evaluations, as well as commitments to involve stakeholders in its implementation and on disclosure of information.

The VPA is designed to tackle illegal logging not only in Vietnam. It will also commit Vietnam to develop procedures and legislation requiring importers to conduct due diligence to prevent illegally-harvested timber from entering Vietnamese supply chains.

The process of VPA implementation – to develop the TLAS elements and build capacity to operate the system – is likely to take some years. Until then, timber products exported from Vietnam to the EU face the normal due diligence requirements of the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR), which prohibits operators from placing illegally-harvested timber from any country on the EU market.

Only when the EU and Vietnam are satisfied that the timber legality assurance system meets the commitments outlined in the VPA, will Vietnam be able to issue FLEGT licences to products it exports to the EU. FLEGT licences are deemed to meet the requirements of the EUTR, meaning that operators who place FLEGT-licensed products on the market do not need to do further due diligence.

More information

Caption: Mrs Astrid Schomaker, Director for Global Sustainable Development of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for the Environment, and Dr Ha Cong Tuan, Vietnamese Vice-Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, initialled the text of the FLEGT VPA.

About the EU FLEGT Facility

The EU FLEGT Facility supports the implementation of the EU FLEGT Action Plan with a focus on Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs). The EU FLEGT Action Plan sets out a programme of actions that forms the EU’s response to the problem of illegal logging and the trade in associated timber products. The Facility is hosted by the European Forest Institute (EFI), and was established in 2007.

This website has been produced with the assistance of the European Union and the Governments of Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The contents of this site are the sole responsibility of the European Forest Institute's EU FLEGT Facility and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of funding organisations.